Please don't let me be misunderstood

Updated
October 27, 2013 07:30:00

What of the forgotten Prince? That's the headline given to Time magazine's cover story this week, referring to Charles, Prince Of Wales. The article caused a stir in Britain, when one of the quotes seemed to suggest the Prince might regard monarchy as a prison. But the journalist behind the article told Correspondent's Report it's just one more example of how the media misinterprets the Prince.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: This week, one small celebrity made a rare appearance and was met with a global wave of oohs and ahhs.

Little Prince George was christened in London, attracting a level of interest usually reserved for his popular parents.

But what of the forgotten Prince?

That's the headline given to Time magazine's cover story this week, referring to Charles, Prince of Wales.

The article caused a stir in Britain, when one of the quotes seemed to suggest that the Prince might regard the monarchy as a type of prison.

But the journalist who wrote the article told Correspondents Report, it's just one more example of how the media misinterprets the Prince.

Here's our Europe Correspondent, Mary Gearin.

MARY GEARIN: It's not often a journalist is invited to spend a few months with a royal.

Catherine Mayer got that chance. She's the editor at large at Time Magazine.

She'd met the Prince of Wales some years before, and she's been fascinated by the monarch-in-waiting, searching for a role before he assumes the crown.

CATHERINE MAYER: Well the reason I wanted to write this piece is that, for years, as I say, I've been interested in him, but I was absolutely fascinated by the growing gulf between who I perceived him to be and the way he was portrayed, particularly in the British media.

And so that was really the reason for doing this. He is not the way he has been portrayed for years, a kind of a sitting there, thinking impatiently, "when will I be King?" You know, "this is my role in life, I'm 64 years old and my mother's still going." That is just rubbish.

MARY GEARIN: But almost as if to emphasise that perception, this is the passage the British media latched onto:

EXCERPT FROM TIME ARTICLE (voiceover): I found a man not, as caricatured, itching to ascend the throne, but impatient to get as much done as possible before, in the words of one member of his household, the prison shades close.

CATHERINE MAYER: What the comment about prison shades is about the fact that this is man who is so busy with this huge empire that he's founded that his time is already at a premium. So, as he takes on more of the Queen's role, they are having to reckon with the loss of more of his time to those royal duties.

So, that is what the quote meant. And it is absolutely ironic and hilarious that the thing that made me interested in reporting on him was that he was misrepresented and now, of course, what I've written has been used to misrepresent him.

MARY GEARIN: Mayer's article describes Prince Charles as green-hued and intellectually ambitious, and, as such, the British mass market newspapers were never going to give him a free pass.

She says there's been an unrelenting swell of criticism of Charles, an innate British distrust of wealthy do-gooders.

His staff has been recently summoned to Parliament to answer questions about his tax arrangements.

Mayer says if he were American, Charles would be lauded for his great philanthropy, as founder of 25 charities and patron of 428 more.

CATHERINE MAYER: He is an impatient man, but he's not impatient to be King, and that was the point I was trying to get across. He's impatient to make an impact in all these areas that he has been working on over the years.

Whether that be on climate change, on saving the rainforests or on ways to help underprivileged young people who are disenfranchised and don't have much chance of getting a job.

MARY GEARIN: If you hadn't already guessed, Mayer's article is clearly sympathetic to a man she considers, not just misunderstood because he's too complex for media to portray, but a victim, in part, of his first wife Princess Diana.

Mayer describes her as:

EXCERPT FROM TIME ARTICLE (voiceover): A queen of public relations who helped sow one of the greatest misapprehensions about her ex-husband - that he's a cold fish.

MARY GEARIN: Mayer says the Prince has overcome great loneliness and isolation. As she says, both sheltered and exposed by his position.

CATHERINE MAYER: One of the things I found very poignant was, not just thinking about this childhood he had, which was, by most people's standards, really bizarre, being sent away to school at 10 then being sent to a really tough school, then even being dispatched, of course, to Australia for his year, though I think he really enjoyed that.

But, taken away from family, and it's not a family that's warm in the sense that most of us would recognise. And then also isolated by his position and by the formality that is part of palace life, so that even his friends even now call him Sir and bowed to him or curtsy to him.

It's a really strange existence, and I think he, at the core of it, has always been quite lonely, hasn't had people that he could really trust. That's why the mentors that he had mattered so much.

Now he has this fantastic relationship with Camilla. You see them together; they are so happy; they giggle together; they're really sweet together.

MARY GEARIN: So there you have it - a philanthropist prince hard at work, likes a giggle and, according to an old friend of his, actress Emma Thompson, apparently dancing with him is better than sex.

Misunderstandings notwithstanding, monarchy has rarely had such good publicity.